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Kenickie are the scariest, luckiest band in britain. Straight outta Sunderland and fresh from sixth form, this spunky boy-girl quartet are absurdly, terryfyingly young.
They released their first single when most of the band were sixteen; younger than Ash or Northern Uproar on their debuts. Younger than The Beatles, The Smiths and the Pistols too.
Kenickie are the first band in seven years of interview to make your correspondent not just old but pensionable, clapped out, redundant. Not only with their impossible youth but also their quick-witted sharpness, blazing intelligence and indistructable self-belief.
Orson wells once credited his success to a childhood in which nobody told him he was bad at anything before he turned 15. Kenickie give off the same vibe: that fame isn't a challenge, more like an entitlement.
Lazy journolistic ploys are shot down in seconds. Mention riot grrrl and they keel over in boredom; ancient history, granddad. Compare them to Shampoo and watch the fur fly. A true teenage gang, they trade surreal in jokes at machine-gun speed, leaving baffled outsiders with their Kenickies in a twist. Imagine a wired trio of Vic Reeves' brains inside three school age Shirley Basseys, with a young Bob Mortimer on drums. Imagine a flesh'n' blood Viz comic strip of lewd hen party banter and spiky attitude. Kenickie are to true to be true.
No wonder indie sadboys on the Sunderland indie scene hate them with passion. No wonder Chris Evans wants them to reveal their A-level results live on his show. They don't, of course , even though singer and songwriter Lauren Laverne got straight 'A's.
"It doesn't matter what results we got," she sniffs haughtily. "We've all passed with flying colours as far as i'm concerned.".
Horaay! Kenickie are natural-born pop stars, hungary for glory and flushed with boundless possibilities. Jammy bastards.
Kenickie are sitting outside a shabby east London pub. having left small time Sunderland they are seeking a Monkees-style head quarters in the capital, to be called, naturally, Fantastic Heights. University places await them if they wish but Kenickie have other plans. They are about to jump straight from the convent-school common room and into the nations hearts.
How the hell did this happen? You see, contrary to the popular myth, most pop groups are ferociously dull creatures, dismal playground show-offs desperate to compensate for their lack of star quality offstage. "That's the point," beams bassit Emmy-Kate Montrose. "We're bored of seeing bands without star quality. That's why we formed - we were really bored of going to see boy bands who come on and go, 'here are some songs I wrote about girls and i'm wearing the same clothes I wore when I wrote the songs'. We thought, 'We could do this much better'."
And so Kenickie was born, a primary school friendship which blossomed from collective esacpe fantasy to teen-punk reality almost overnight. But isn't the daily routine of soundchecks and studio sessions simply to naff for true stars like Kenickie?
"I agree," nods guitarist Marie du Santiago. "But being in a band if you do it right is THE BEST THING YOU COULD EVER DO WITH YOUR LIFE. Better than all that cure-for-cancer bollocks."
Yes indeed. Already masters of the provocative soundbite, Kenickie seem wise beyond their years. A cynic might even suspect them of classic Britpop tradition, exagerrating their youth.
"Shall we prove our ages?" laughs fancifully-named drummer Johnny X, Laurens older brotherand band oldster at 21. Out come four Tyne & Wear travelcards with scaryfying proof. Three birthdates in 1978 and one, X's card, in 1975. It also reveals his real name: Peter.
Bloody hell - 1978! These girls were born after punk rock! After Grease, the film which gave them their name! No wonder they refer to Suede as "classic indie pop"!
In a final desperate bid to dampen their raging teen optimism, your jealous old codger of a chack argues that there should be a law baning anyone from being in a band until 25 years of age. After all, you haven't really lived at 17 have you?
"As far as what our songs describe we've lived. We've dissed sucker MCs who think they're fly!" insist X, strangely.
"Excuse ME!" bellows Lauren, "So through bizarre legal loophole you would KILL The Shangri-La's and let MICHAEL BOLTON live? is that what you're trying to say? Just SHUT YOU'RE MOUTH, boy!"
Damn, Game, set and match to the youngsters, Cocky bastards.
Kenickie live for glamour. With touching naivety, they think pop stardom will satisfy all their spangled, seaquined, feather boa-wearing needs. Then again, they might just bring the grubby old music industry to heel. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, how glamorous is life in Kenickie?
"Very, very, VERY glamorous," coos Marie in her most regal tone. "You know that bit when Maraline Monroe's skirt blows up? we're like that again and again for our whole lives. A moment of exquisite glamour for a whole lifetime."
Kenickie are already old hands at celebrity hob-nobbing. Emmy-Kate doesn't like discussing it, but she once shared screen space with Ant & Dec in Byker Grove and, until recently, was courting a member of allegedly glamorous romo band Orlando.
"We only refer to other celebrities by their surnames to keep them in their place," says Marie. "And we only like proper celebrities, none of your Nick Caves our owt like that. Because we haven't met a celebrity as good as us yet. They'll have to try harder."
Which of their new celeb mates have proved truly glamorous?
"The Manics and the sexy one from Suede, the new one - what a fancy piece!"
Pop fancy pieces it seems are a hot topic in the simmering cauldron of teenage hormones that is Kenickie.
"We're lecherous, like old men." cackles Marie. "But bands with fancy pieces in are usually a bit thick. They're dead earnest about it and won't put their photos on the sleeve. Like Me Me Me - a band full of fancy pieces, basically, that's their point. But are there any pictures of them on their sleeve? Fucking hell, no, so we didn't buy it as a protest. What they should have had on the cover was Alex James sucking his cheeks in, doing his hair in a fancy piece way, smouldering into the camera."
Marie keeps a marriage list of fancy pieces.
"James out of the Manics is on it, and Nicky Wire as well, obviously...I'd marry Sean too. Any Manic Street Preacher you'd marry - you couldn't say no could you? If they came up and asked you in their lovely little South Welsh voices you'd just go, 'Aaaaaah, yeah'."
Fluffy, though are most definately not on Kencikie's fancy piece list. Enraged by constant comparisons to the London poshos, the northern foursome eager to thrash all parallels.
"We're not as thick as fucking pigshit, we don't have a nanny on board and we can write in something other than crayon," spits Emmy-Kate rather splendidly.
"The thing about Fluffy is, I don't hate them, I just don't care," sighs Lauren. "Like you know when you see some girl at an indie club who's throwing up and crying because her boyfriends left her? You just think 'I don't hate her, I just DON'T CARE. Fuck off'."
Kenickie are recently signed to Emidisc, the EMI-owned imprint run by Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs.
Stanley claims the band will be millionaires before they're 20. He might be right.
Their first Emidisc single single is called 'Punka'. It's a melodic powerpop blast with chunky Ash-style production and a lethally sarcastic lyric dissing the self-righteous, self-defeating bullshit of indie purism. Kenickie won't name names, but their experiance on a certain Newcastle lo-fi label inspired 'Punka'.
"'What are your punk credentials? How many bands have you been in before that I've never heard of?'" mocks Emmy-Kate. "You only realisehow stupid it is when you start explaining it to someone totally outside it all, like you're mam. She goes, 'wait a minute - they don't WANT to sell records? They like music and they don't want people to know about them...?'"
Despite their feted lo-fi past Lauren claims the underground was never Kencikie's natural habitat.
"We never believed in it. We always said we wanted to be pop stars and everybody said, 'Oh, that's so ironic and cool and kitsch'. Then we went, 'Look, we're actually going to BE popstars' and they all went, 'SELL OUT!'."
So just how punk rock are Kenickie?
"Punk as fuck!" yells X
"Classy as fuck yet cunning as a bastard!" adds Lauren. "And the Kenickie motto is: dignity, dignity, dignity. What was that Ricky Ross song, 'A ship called dignity'? Well we're a band called dignity."
Not quite Lauren. You're an express train of stroppy pop brilliance called Kenickie. A teen punk comet on a collision couse with stardom.
And so, as your correspondant books himself into a twilight rest home, Kenickie will be finishing off their debut album and lining up world tours. They will be photographed leaving glamorous parties with fancy pieces on each arm. They will become betrothed to earls and viscounts and move into country mansions. Because, for Kenickie, school's out forever. The cocky, cunning, jammy little bastards.
Stephen Dalton
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© 1997 xdk42@dial.pipex.com
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